AFTER 20 years of searching for a vacation home, Isaac and Donna Koilpillai stumbled on what they considered the perfect place last year: a duplex in Fernandina Beach, Fla., 150 feet from the Atlantic Ocean — and 1,100 miles from their primary residence in Rochester.

That distance might be daunting to some, but not the Koilpillais, who every few months pack themselves, Ms. Koilpillai’s parents and their husky into their Toyota S.U.V. and make the 16-hour drive south to Fernandina Beach, the northernmost community on the east coast of Florida.

The sole incorporated town on Amelia Island, Fernandina Beach encompasses much of the land on the 13.5-mile-long barrier island just south of the Georgia border.

With a rich history that spans ancient Indian tribes, plundering pirates and the shrimping industry, it has both a well-preserved downtown with grand Victorians, eclectic restaurants and unusual shops as well as miles of lightly developed oceanfront. It is this combination, along with a decidedly resort-free atmosphere, that attracts second-home buyers from around the country.

Throughout the island, majestic live oaks draped in Spanish moss canopy the roadways. While summers are hot, it is cooler than southern Florida, where many second-home owners come from for relief from heat and traffic.

Fernandina Beach’s proximity to Georgia not only makes it popular with people from Atlanta, a five-and-a-half-hour drive or one-hour flight away, and southern Georgia, but also contributes to more of an Old South feel than in much of modern Florida — something Midwesterners like Judy and Steve Sherman of Carmel, Ind., cite as an attraction.

The Shermans live nearly 1,000 miles away, but they choose to take advantage of the nearby Jacksonville airport, making the hour-and-40-minute flight there from Indianapolis several times a year for long weekends at their town house in Fernandina Beach.

“We didn’t want the hustle-bustle, or the crowds,” said Ms. Sherman, 60, a former training director for Junior Achievement. “We were looking for a place that’s a town, not a resort.”

The Shermans are in their second vacation home in Fernandina Beach, a 2,300-square-foot town house they bought new in 2005 for $400,000. They had owned a smaller single-family house for four years.

The island gained momentum as a tourist destination in the 1970s with the development of Amelia Island Plantation, a 1,350-acre residential resort community at the southern end. The 1991 addition of a Ritz-Carlton in Summer Beach, another resort community just north of the plantation, brought a new class of vacationers and second-home buyers to luxury condos on the property.

The Scene

As a place where eight flags have been flown — including those of France, Spain, England, various insurgent groups, the United States and the Confederacy — Fernandina Beach takes great pride in its history, which dates back 4,000 years, when ancestors of the Timucua Indians lived here.

European explorers landed some 400 years ago, and the deep waters at the Port of Fernandina in the north end attracted pirates who laid in wait for ships blown off course. By the start of the 20th century, it was one of the busiest ports in the country, the place where the modern shrimping industry got its start. That heritage is celebrated with the Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival, which brings 150,000 people to the city the first weekend in May each year. The town’s population was 11,543 in 2007, according to a census estimate.

A 50-block area of the downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Besides Victorian homes, some of which have been converted to apartments or offices, the district has restaurants, shops, galleries, churches and two community theater groups.

There area also has numerous bed-and-breakfasts, like the Ash Street Inn (102 South Seventh Street; 800-277-6660, www.ashstreetinn.net; from $139 a night), which has 10 rooms in two Victorian homes.

A second historic district is halfway down the island at American Beach, a resort that was founded in 1935 to give blacks access to the ocean in an otherwise segregated South.

Private golf clubs can be found at the Amelia Island Plantation and the Summer Beach area, and the Fernandina Beach Golf Club is a well-regarded public course.

Mr. Koilpillai said he had been trying his hand at surf fishing, a popular pastime on the island’s 12 miles of beaches and off the pier at Fort Clinch State Park. The 1,427-acre park also provides hiking and bike trails, campsites and historic re-enactments.

Of course, the island’s white sand beaches are the biggest drawing card. The island is just two miles across at its widest point, and most homes are within walking or biking distance of the beach. And with 57 public access points, the free beaches are rarely crowded, even in the summer.

When the Koilpillais first visited Fernandina Beach in the summer of 2006, Mr. Koilpillai said the beaches were what persuaded him to buy a home. The couple bought a new 2,000-square-foot duplex in Summer Beach last January for $337,500.

“We came into town and drove down to the beach,” said Mr. Koilpillai, a 66-year-old psychiatrist. “I looked up and down and I was done. There were an equal number of dogs and human beings, and there weren’t very many of either of them.”

Pros

The genteel charm of the Deep South combined with the casual beach village atmosphere of Key West make Fernandina Beach an unusual Florida destination. It has the remote feeling of a barrier island, yet is only 30 or 40 minutes from Jacksonville International Airport. (The island has a municipal airport with three paved runways of 5,000 to 5,300 feet and can handle all general-aviation-type aircraft.)

A city law limits the heights of future beach buildings to 37 feet, which helps maintain views.

Cons

While natives appreciate the change of seasons, visitors hoping to winter in Florida might be surprised by the cool water and the occasional freezing temperatures from November through March.

The Real Estate Market

The second-home market is driven by the proximity to the ocean in Fernandina Beach, where 430 homes and 304 condos were on the market this week, according to the Nassau County Board of Realtors.

“People want to be on the ocean, or a block from the ocean, or at least able to see the ocean,” said Paul Barnes, who owned a bed-and-breakfast in town before joining the Jasinsky & Associates office of Coldwell Banker five years ago.

South Fletcher Avenue is the island’s beach road, and houses on the ocean side go for $1 million to $2 million. On the other side of the street, prices drop precipitously: a three-bedroom house was listed at $599,000.

Home prices have more than doubled since the start of the decade, with the median home value in 2008 being $335,000, compared with $134,000 in 2000. Still, real estate activity has slowed considerably, according to the county real estate board , which reported 190 homes sold by the end of 2008, compared with 312 in 2007. The total sales value dropped to $73 million last year from $158 million in 2007.

With sales down that much, Mary Caserta of Century 21 said there were “bargains to be had.”

At the south end of the island, single-family homes now on the market in Amelia Island Plantation range from $535,000 to $4.95 million, plus membership fees.

More typical are the houses that make up much of the central part of the island, where a 1,900-square-foot ranch a few blocks from the beach was recently listed for $395,000. Many of the original beach bungalows and double-deckers remain in the north end of the island, like a rustic cedar-sided four-bedroom house with decks looking out on the ocean that is on the market for $599,000.